


leave the banner there

by sixpences



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Episode One, M/M, Pining, Post-GPF banquet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-13
Updated: 2017-01-13
Packaged: 2018-09-17 06:24:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9309371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sixpences/pseuds/sixpences
Summary: "Victor has a crush- a full-blown, goofy-daydreaming, struggling-to-sleep-at-night crush."Victor pines, entertains his rinkmates, and wonders what the heck to do with himself.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Non-English words have a translation in hover text, and also in the end notes.

> _After it ends_  
>  _I'm so hungry_  
>  _Like I was just born_  
>  _I'm still aching for life_

 

It’s not as if there’s some kind of _deficit_ of beautiful, charming young men in Victor’s life. He’s been running a surplus for decades. Even if he wasn’t the kind of famous where strangers would practically drool on him in the street or send him creepy proposals via Twitter, the athletic world he’s lived in almost for as long as he can remember is overflowing with sharp cheekbones and chiseled abdomens and various other impressive attributes to show off on Grindr.

It’s not even as if the 2015 GPF was some sort of brigade of uglies otherwise. He’ll always have a soft spot for Chris, even now he’s clearly besotted with that Czech choreographer of his. He wouldn’t kick any of the rest of them out of bed for eating crackers either. Well, maybe Leroy. That kid is so heterosexual it’s almost painful to look at him.

But then it’s not just that Yuuri Katsuki is beautiful, or charming, or funny, or a wonderful dancer, or that he can wind up little Plisetsky until he looks like his head is going to pop off. It’s something in the way he laughs, the way he moves his body, the way he doesn’t seem to give a shit that he’s running his thumb up the inner thigh of _Victor Nikiforov_ , Living Legend, in the middle of a drunken tango dip whilst surrounded by the grandees of international figure skating. When Yuuri Katsuki dances with him, he doesn’t give a shit about being _Victor Nikiforov_ either.

He spends the whole three hour flight back to St Petersburg cursing the fact that neither he nor any of his rinkmates managed to get Yuuri’s number.

“You’re so cute, Vitya.” Mila laughs and pokes him in the ribs. “Like a little fanboy. Just go stalk him on Twitter like normal people do. I’m sure he’s dying to talk to you again.”

“It’s not cute, it’s _disgusting_ ,” Yuri declares, kicking the back of Victor’s plane seat. Victor wishes in retrospect that he’d asked to sit with those twin babies in coach instead. Much more peaceful. “I don’t know why you want anything to do with that _loser_.”

Mila twists around and reaches between the seats to ruffle Yuri’s hair. “You’ll understand if you ever hit puberty, _kotyonok_.” The growling noise Yuri makes in response is more stepped-on tiger than kitten, but Mila gives him her world-famous shit-eating grin and starts singing that song from _Kitten Named Woof_ , the colour of Yuri’s face looking more and more like raw beetroot the more of the Russian contingent join in. Even Yakov, two rows ahead of them, is humming. 

But when Victor gets off the plane, through the airport, past the press, back to his apartment where there is Makkachin’s fluffy, slobbery, delightful embrace and also wifi, he discovers that while Yuuri Katsuki does have a Twitter, it is entirely in Japanese and hasn’t been updated in three years. His profile picture is still an egg for goodness’ sake. Victor follows him anyway, just in case, and googles ‘Japanese learning apps’.

Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe in a few days, weeks, this will all feel very silly. But when he closes his eyes Victor can still feel Yuuri’s hands on him, his laughing face pressed against Victor’s chest, and that absurd, crazy, somehow incredibly tempting invitation plays over and over in his mind.

* * *

“How much do you love me?” Mila asks, stretching out her quads while Victor runs through some yoga poses.

“Like a favourite sister,” he replies. It’s true. She is both dear enough and desperately annoying enough to him to count as family.

“Good, because I brought you a present _bratishka_.”

“I’m ten years older than you,” he protests, but Mila just rummages in her bag and pulls out her phone, which after a few taps and swipes she turns to show him.

“Your Yuuri might hate the internet, but his rinkmate certainly doesn’t.”

She’s showing him an Instagram account called ‘phichit+chu’, which is mostly filled with selfies of a pretty cute South-East Asian-looking boy and pictures of hamsters. But as Victor scrolls down he sees a video of Yuuri Katsuki performing a beautiful combination spin in an empty rink (#GPFwatchout), a selfie of him and this Phichit kid sharing a blanket and grinning in the light of a laptop screen (#roomiesmovienight), him fast asleep with comedy facial hair drawn on his face in marker (#yuuriimoustacheyouaquestion).

“Don’t worry Vitya, I’m pretty sure they’re not dating.” Mila lets him take the phone and keep scrolling while she returns to her stretches. “I already followed him. Do you want me to send him a message saying that my friend likes his friend and could my friend have his friend’s phone number, pretty please?”

“Some of us are not teenagers anymore,” Victor huffs, still scrolling through Phichit’s Instagram. The kid actually has a pretty good eye for a nice photo, or perhaps that’s just a side effect of the sheer quantity he posts. Extensive and totally professional googling has informed Victor that Yuuri is currently training and studying in Detroit under Celestino Cialdini, who’s made a few brief cameos of his own in Phichit’s exhaustive photographic record-keeping. He’d been scouted at the 2009 Japanese nationals, having made it there with no professional coaching or choreography other than his ballet teacher. Victor can’t imagine skating competitively in his teens without having had someone he paid to drag him out of bed every morning. He knows Yuuri performed poorly at the Grand Prix Final, but everyone has a bad competition now and again, and he’s not Japan’s top men’s singles skater for nothing.

He scrolls back up and watches the video of him on the ice again, his eyes closed as he spins, as if in time to a music no-one else can hear.

Walking home from practice, Victor follows Phichit himself. A few minutes later the kid posts a screenshot of the notification, captioned only ‘(*ﾟﾛﾟ) #holyshit’. Maybe Yuuri hasn’t told him about what happened at the banquet yet. Victor’s not sure if that’s a good or a bad sign.

* * *

Victor had hoped to keep up with the Japanese nationals in between events at the Russian competition, but Yakov’s ex-wife is there and in his resulting grouchy mood he’s confiscated everyone’s phones to help them ‘focus’. Victor hasn’t made any progress on figuring out a non-creepy way of getting back in touch with Yuuri, and it’s not as if Yuuri seems like he’s making any effort to reconnect with Victor either, which kind of stings. He’s been toying with the idea of blowing off training for a couple of days and flying out to the Four Continents. It’s not a bad idea to scope out the competition in person. And Yuuri will be there, no matter if things are a little awkward after a while without talking.

He has at least stopped pretending to himself that this is just some kind of passing fancy. Victor has a crush- a full-blown, goofy-daydreaming, struggling-to-sleep-at-night crush, of the kind he thought he’d long since grown out of. He’s read interviews, watched videos, started lurking on the English-speaking Yuuri Katsuki forums. He’s looked through every page of the website for Yuuri’s parents’ hot springs resort- _onsen_ , he reminds himself, trying to recall the proper kanji. Or was it hiragana? He’s always considered himself somewhat gifted with languages, having picked up English and French almost without trying despite their silly alphabet, but while speaking and hearing phrases isn’t too difficult the Japanese writing system is like wrestling a bear.

He wants to at least try though. He knows Yuuri’s college major is linguistics, wants to be able to impress him at Worlds with a greeting in perfect Japanese, send some flowers to his room with ヴィクトル on the card in his own handwriting. Maybe afterwards he could ask Yuuri to help teach him.

Victor glides out onto the ice for his free skate imagining Yuuri Katsuki murmuring unknown words in his ear. He’d commissioned _Stammi Vicino, Non Te Ne Andare_ nearly a year ago, thinking of lonely runs on freezing cold St Petersburg mornings, the empty spaces in his apartment that even Makkachin can’t fill. He doesn’t think he’s ever fully understood the piece until now.

* * *

Yuuri won’t be in the line-up for Four Continents. News reports and the sobbing skating nerds on his forums say he completely blew the Japanese nationals, losing to a bunch of kids. Victor feels ridiculous but he can’t help sulking about it. Did he get injured? Is he past his prime already? In the weeks of silence since the Grand Prix Final Victor had started pinning his hopes on meeting up with Yuuri again at Worlds and finally figuring out if there’s something more between them than just one dazzling night in Sochi.

Perhaps Yuuri was planning on that too. Perhaps now he’ll get in touch. It’s not as if Victor’s difficult to find online.

* * *

They’re a week away from the World Championships in Boston and he hasn’t heard a _thing_. Even Phichit’s highly informative Instagram never seems to feature Yuuri anymore. It’s like the man is dropping off the face of the earth- or perhaps deliberately trying to keep himself dropped out of Victor’s life.

Mila invites him over for ice cream and old movies with a few of her friends- the ice cream being a closely-guarded secret from Yakov- and rubs his back soothingly during _Ivan Vasilievich Changes Profession_.

“There’s plenty more sushi in the ocean,” she says. Victor pouts.

“Has he ever been like this before?” Elina asks, leaning her head back to look at Mila. She’s twenty years old, muscular, Russia’s great hope for a medal in the upcoming women’s ice hockey world championships, and currently has a blob of melting chocolate ice cream on the tip of her nose. Mila wipes it off for her.

“If he has, he was much better at hiding it.” She turns back to Victor. “Have you ever been so adorably lovesick before, Vitya?”

He crams another spoonful of ice cream into his mouth and mumbles around it, “Be quiet, I’m watching the movie.”

He doesn’t really want to admit to a room full of women that he has not, in fact, been like this before. He’s had a few flings, a couple of boyfriends he felt reluctant letting go of. As amicable as it was he’d still moped about for a few weeks five years ago when Andrei broke things off after six months to go and join the Paris Opera Ballet. But somehow a single night of partying with a beautiful, wonderful, ridiculous, drunken Japanese man has him pining like a teenager after a rock star. Pining, he thinks, like a lot of teenagers do after _him_.

It doesn’t exactly help that skating, always his distraction, his first and foremost love, has been feeling more and more like a chore since the season started. He’s ancient for a figure skater at twenty-seven, and while no-one is going to say the word ‘retirement’ to him while the gold medals are still rolling in, he can’t help but think it. But what would he even do with himself?

_Visit my family’s hot spring!_

_If I win the dance-off, say you’ll be my coach Victor!_

Yuuri Katsuki might have lost in the rink, but he won a lot of things at that banquet.

* * *

Once it’s over, once the scores are announced, once there’s another gold medal hanging around his neck, he slips away from Yakov and his rinkmates and the press and back into the arena, hovering at the edge of the stands. The Zamboni is out smoothing the ice for tomorrow’s exhibition, the cleaning staff picking up after the spectators. He smiles, greets them in English and again in Spanish, just in case, and they smile back and seem to have absolutely no idea who he is. The lights are cool and bright everywhere, no colours, no spotlights.

Beneath the judges’ booth the banner is sagging a little. That’ll be fixed up before they all come back tomorrow, smart and polished for the end of the show. He can’t stay long, there’s a press conference for the medallists in a few minutes, but he lifts his eyes to the high, empty ceiling of the arena where the shadows linger and breathes out slowly.

* * *

Victor doesn’t bother to unpack when he gets home from Worlds. He ditches his suitcases and, after a thank-you text to his dog-sitter, leaves his phone on the kitchen counter and takes Makkachin out for a walk.

The Moscow Victory Park isn’t far away from his apartment, and the evenings are starting to get warm enough now that there’s still a lot of people about late in the day. Victor smiles and nods at the people who greet him, ignores the artificial click of camera phone shutters, makes deliberate conversation about ice hockey with the owner of a large, cheerful samoyed that Makkachin decides she needs to sniff thoroughly. She might be spayed but she’s still got better romantic prospects than Victor.

The cool wind feels like it’s blowing cobwebs out of his head. They still haven’t taken down the ice rink, and he toys idly with the idea of hiring a pair of skates and going for a few slow, casual circuits around it, like just another normal person enjoying the tail end of winter. Like someone who isn’t _Victor Nikiforov_.

He hasn’t told anyone yet but he’s definitely taking the next season off, at the very least. Maybe he could just take Makkachin and go somewhere entirely new, somewhere he can be a new kind of person. Yakov will probably murder him, but Victor’s been pissing off his coaches one way or another for twenty years.

His phone buzzes on the counter as they’re coming back through the apartment door, but he ignores it, shaking out some dinner into Makkachin’s bowl and putting the kettle on to make himself some coffee. It buzzes again while he sets up the filter, and again when he takes the sugar out of the cupboard, and eventually it becomes irritating enough to pick it up, taking it to the sofa along with his coffee mug. Makkachin climbs up and sprawls lovingly across his stomach as he flicks through an absurd array of text and Twitter notifications all saying the same thing. Yuuri Katsuki did… something. Something extraordinary. 

He opens up his Twitter app, types out, “Thanks everyone! I was out walking Makkachin going to watch it now,” and once that’s out in the internet aether he taps one of the many links to the YouTube video.

Victor knows this routine like his own name, thinks he could probably skate it upside down and backwards whilst asleep. He knows all the timings, the little twists, the way the blades of his skates sound on the ice as he lands each jump. The video is silent but watching Yuuri move he can still hear those yearning woodwinds, the violins like delicate morning frost, those vocals swelling over the roll of the kettle drums. He can _feel_ it like it’s pouring over him from arena speakers. His legs twitch reflexively, anticipating a jump.

It’s a perfect imitation. Perhaps there’s one or two technical flaws he can’t quite spot through the camera, but the power, the spirit, the emotion of the routine feels like it came straight from his own heart. Victor frowns at his phone, starting the video again. How could a man who can skate his world championship-winning programme, who can perform like he’s got a whole orchestra in his bones, come in sixth at the Grand Prix Finals and bomb out of his own national competition? He’s clearly not injured, and a long way from physically peaking if he can do a routine this challenging with that off-season belly. What has Cialdini been _doing_ with him? It doesn’t make any sense.

Victor switches to his texts, which are another litany of people sending him the video and asking eagerly for his thoughts- Mila, Chris, Georgi, Bin, Anya, even Yuri, although the latter seems to think the video is nothing but further proof of Yuuri Katsuki’s permanent _loser!!1!_ status. He scrolls through Mila’s emoji- and exclamation-laden texts to the latest one and stops, stares.

‘Maybe he decided it was time to get in touch?’

Something warm and bright bubbles up in Victor’s chest like sunshine, like he’s fourteen again and a cute boy at the rinkside is smiling at him. Of course. What _else_ could Yuuri mean by this? It’s a letter in a language they’re both fluent in, a silent serenade.

_Ora sono pronto._

He’s going to do it. He’s going to make good on a drunken dance-off bet with a stranger, going to fly to the other side of the world and find out what on earth has been holding back the man who left him smitten four months ago, the man who skates like a gold medallist but somehow comes in last. He’s going to leave _Victor Nikiforov_ hung on his coat rack here in St Petersburg and figure out if there’s someone else he could be.

Victor drops his phone on the floor and pulls Makkachin up into a tight hug. “Time for a trip!”

**Author's Note:**

> Title and epithet taken from ['After It Ends' by John Vanderslice](https://soundcloud.com/johnvanderslice/05-after-it-ends), which is a good song that you should listen to.
> 
> **Translations:**  
>  _kotyonok_ \- kitten  
>  _bratishka_ \- little brother  
>  ヴィクトル - 'Victor' in katakana  
>  _Ora sono pronto_ \- 'Now I'm ready', the last line of _Stammi Vicino_
> 
> PS. Victor's username on the Yuuri Katsuki forums is 'xXx_fromrussiawithlove_xXx'. You're welcome.


End file.
